Men Of Action
by Constant Babble
Summary: There was a vampire on the other end of the line, although the Doctor almost didn't recognize the voice. He said that they had taken his son. He said the date and location slowly and precisely. He said, "Please." The Doctor never could turn his back on a request for help, but sometimes the difference between monsters and heroes is a single moment.
1. Part One

Author's note:

This takes place immediately after the _Angel_ episode, "Sleep Tight," and somewhere near the end of Series 6 of New Who. This can be considered a sequel to _Room In The Middle_, but there is a gap between these two stories. For everyone's convenience, please assume that Angel and the Doctor know each other a little bit more than they do at the end of that story and that Angel is not surprised by that bow tie.

Men Of Action

_Revolutions are brought about by men, by men who think as men of action and act as men of thought._

- Kwame Nkrumah

The Doctor should know better. He really, really should. He was old, and could even by some be considered wise. But he had a soft spot that was really several soft spots, and several more soft spots that were really more like giant, gaping wounds that he'd really prefer if no one touched or talked about or stood just a little too close to or…

It was just the one soft spot that got him today.

He had been considering whether he wanted to explore the caves on Poosh (not the moon, the planet) or if he'd rather try his hand at climbing Mount Everest (because it was _there_) and was just deciding that he would set the coordinates for one while thinking about the other and let the TARDIS split the difference as she would when the phone rang.

It had a classical look to it; sort of greenish with a long, twirling cord that could loop twice around the console before whoever was holding it had to turn around and walk the other way. It hadn't always looked that way. It was (and was still in a way that he would never bother to explain to any human that traveled with him, if they asked – which they wouldn't) really Martha's old cell phone, but worked into the finish. The TARDIS, sexy thing that she was, had merely taken Martha's old cell phone from its spot nestled between two levers on the console and worked it into the remodeling project after she had crashed. But really, it was the same phone. It was ringing.

The Doctor liked to think that it was the sound of the ringing that he didn't like. The hollow clanging that issued from the console was loud and jarring in a way that was fitting for the current motif. But it was difficult to believe that that really was the reason when every time that phone rang the Doctor remembered why he had never had a phone before: it was never good news. He found bad news to be even worse when there was no one there to tell it to him or to hug or to put on a strong front for.

After several moments of twitching his fingers in the general direction of the phone without actually touching it, the Doctor snatched with a sharp motion like he was trying to grab a snake before it could bite him.

There was a vampire on the other end of the line, although the Doctor almost didn't recognize the voice. It sounded strained, like too many emotions were battling for dominance: Anger, fear, despair, and that twinge of planet-shattering hope. Four emotions…perhaps his voice was being drawn and quartered.

Angel (and really, wasn't that just a wonderful name for a vampire?) didn't say much, which was for the best given the state of his voice. He said that they had taken his son. He said the date and location slowly and precisely. He said "Please." And then he hung up.

The Doctor set his end of the telephone back in its cradle. He contemplated taking the phone out of the TARDIS without actually considering it. He knew he wouldn't, and suspected that the TARDIS would make it very difficult if he tried; the same way she had prevented the phone from flying off of the console where he had originally set it and getting lost.

The problem, although it really wasn't the only problem, with time travel was that it often let you know things before you should know them and knowing those things tied your hands. Only it wasn't like having your hands tied at all. It was more like someone had set the cure for the common cold across the room and then said, "Oh, by the way, if you step on the floor anywhere near that end of the room you'll set off several nuclear bombs. Have a nice day."

The Doctor should, if he were as wise as some people thought he was, not show up. He knew this as he adjusted a vortex stabilizer and then reached across to type the coordinates Angel had told him into the typewriter. He should not show up or show up late and walk out like he had simply missed the mark a bit. Given several trillion years, what's a few weeks here or there? Angel would never forgive him, but then, he'd done the same to others; it is surprisingly easy to pretend you're still friends with people if you run away before they can tell you how much they've come to hate you.

The TARDIS jolted and swerved through the vortex. The Doctor checked the screen and the reset the coordinates again. They had drifted several weeks forward from where he'd set them several moments before. He patted the console and whispered, "Thank you, but I think I might be learning how to not run away."

He supposed he'd have to learn now that his death was creeping toward him like a glacier: slow, unyielding, and very, very cold.

No, today he was not dead. Today, he would help as much as he could.

It was dark outside the TARDIS. He stepped through the doors, his boots crunching onto gravel.

"Ah," he said.

Apparently, someone had ripped, quite literally _ripped_, a hole in the fabric of the universe (which really wasn't like fabric at all; more like jello or bones or bones made of jello, except not like that at all either) and then stitched it back together, but only in the most rudimentary way. Because, he thought, you can't really stitch something that isn't really like fabric and it just looks silly when you try. Or ugly. It had the same horrible twisted look of a crushed car. Energy dripped like oil from the closed rift not twenty yards in front of him, giving him a feverish and sickly feeling. The air tasted slightly of sulfur and melted tar and expensive perfume.

Below the poorly-mended rip, Angel was trying to push himself to his feet. He was staring at a spot just a little to the left of the rift the same way a blind person would try to look at someone talking to them but miss just enough to make it noticeable. Of course, the Doctor realized, it was a good bit like that. Angel's senses were sharper than those of a human, but he was still missing the ones needed to actually experience the rift. The Doctor was reminded that he was an alien here (or anywhere, really). Or maybe it was that everywhere was alien to him? He liked the ring of that better and decided to think of it that way whenever the need came up.

He walked forward slowly and steadily, the way one approached frightened animals. As he walked, he took note of the military vehicles that were driving away and of the single jeep that had stopped and shifted into reverse. Better to move around Angel, then, he reasoned. Angel was, after all, inclined toward action, and at times like this when he was left alone and frightened, Angel might try to snap the first arm that touched his shoulder. So he moved into Angel's line of vision to avoid any arm-snapping that might have happened and to keep an eye on the jeep that had stopped again. He reached out a hand to help, but let Angel make the first move.

Angel blinked at him for a moment before grabbing the outstretched hand and hauling himself to his feet. The hand was noticeably cold, which the Doctor found more unsettling than he would have originally thought he would. Years spent with humans left him expecting everyone to have skin much hotter than his own.

"Connor," Angel said, before he had even caught his balance. "They took him. Opened a portal there. You can't see it now, but it was there." He pointed to the spot to the left of the rift.

The Doctor turned to look where Angel was pointing and nodded because no one appreciated being corrected on details when their lives where falling apart. "Come on," he said, pulling the cold hand towards the TARDIS.

The hand was shaking, just a little.

Angel pulled his hand free a moment later, obviously not used to or comfortable with physical contact. It was a small gesture, but it gave the Doctor enough time to position himself between Angel and the woman who had exited the jeep. He moved to walk around the woman, but she stepped with him and extended a hand.

"Hello, I'm Lilah Morgan, head of Special Projects with Wolfram and Hart," she said professionally. It matched her professional smile and her professional clothes and her professional posture. The Doctor didn't take her hand. She dropped it back to her side in a way that the Doctor thought was disgustingly professional. "Are you an associate of Angel's?" she inquired. "I make it a point to meet all of Angel's acquaintances." The Doctor suspected that the last bit was added to intimidate him. It was supposed to tell him that she was powerful.

He smiled a smile that went not a millimeter deeper than hers (although he suspected his looked far more roughish and handsome) and reached back a hand to as a sign that Angel should not attack the woman like he seemed to be tensing to do.

"I'm not an acquaintance; I'm a friend," he told her in mild tones. "And I don't really care what your position is because I know what you do." He stepped a little closer to her and she took a quick frightened step back. "You try to control. So much that you let a little child be ripped into hell. So much that you'd leave a man in pain just to prove that you can. So much that you'd come back just to try and threaten the person who tries to help." The Doctor suspected that she was trying to look indifferent and that was why she didn't look away from his eyes, even when she took another unsteady step back, her heels shifting oddly in the gravel. "You are not in control." He told her. "And if you continue to stand between us and that door, I will show you just how not in control you really are."

Part of him, the dark part that he usually told himself he wouldn't ever yield to again, told him that not only could he show her that she was not in control, but that he could do it very easily. It told him that he might not be considered entirely wrong for doing so.

Lilah got out of the way.

The Doctor continued to watch her as he snapped his fingers, opening the TARDIS doors. Then he dismissed her, letting his focus shift back to moving Angel back into motion while listening to her heels shift in the gravel for anything particularly back-stabby. He noted, as he followed Angel into the ship, that the doors had opened to just the right angle to prevent Lilah from seeing inside and that Lilah did not move her position to find out what she couldn't see. He wondered if she didn't look because of fear or because of a lack of curiosity. It didn't matter; he wasn't here for her.

He followed Angel into the green glow of the console room, noting that Angel had a limp to go with his shaking hand. The doors clicked closed behind them.

"Right!" he said. His voice sounded just a little too loud and far more nervous than he had intended it to sound. "Right," he said again, more quietly. He moved past Angel and up the stairs. He flipped a switch and pressed a button. The TARDIS, with a single shuddering groan, shifted.

When he turned around again, Angel had moved to the bottom of the stairs. His hand had stopped shaking; the Doctor suspected due to sheer force of will. Angel had clenched his hand into a fist. Actually, he had tensed his whole body like he was preparing to jump into hell. Because it was precisely like that, the Doctor thought.

"The dimension's called Quor'toth." Angel said through clenched teeth. The Doctor nodded. "We'll need to land a little away from where Connor and Holtz jumped through. If Holtz sees me coming he might hurt Connor."

"Come on," the Doctor said too cheerfully, mostly to cover the sound of his hearts breaking. Walking down two steps from the console platform before jumping the rest, he headed for one of the staircases leading farther into the TARDIS.

As he descended the stairs, he listened to the pause as he suspected Angel tried to understand why he was not running around driving the TARDIS through the "portal" at this very moment. Quick, uneven footsteps followed after him just as he reached the bottom of the stairs and disappeared from view. He slowed just a bit to give Angel time to catch up; he didn't want to lose the vampire in the TARDIS halls.

"Where are we going?" Angel asked impatiently.

"Not far," the Doctor told him, confident that the TARDIS understood that this was not the sort of time to show off. She did. Two lefts, a right, and a short ramp later, the Doctor opened the door and waved Angel into the kitchen.

The Doctor paused briefly next to Angel, who looked like he was either very confused or very, very angry and admired that the TARDIS had changed the walls from lime green to deep red and had switched half of the country style cabinets with sleek, industrial-looking cabinets and left the other half as they were. She had not, however, moved the teapot. She was sure to never move the teapot.

"Sit," he said in the same tone he used to tell invading forces to turn around and go home.

Angel sat, although the Doctor suspected that he acquiesced because he was exhausted more than because of the tone of voice used to give the command. Really, he didn't sit as much as he fell into the chair.

The Doctor gave him a small smile that Angel probably didn't see because he was stretching out his hurt leg. And then the Doctor set to work. He started the water because that always took the longest. He spun around twice before he located the refrigerator (it was a lovely avocado color and hiding next to the stove). He opened the door, surveyed the contents, and closed the door again with a dissatisfied click of his tongue. Moving down a row of cabinets, he wondered if the TARDIS might cross reference the infirmary storage with the kitchen cabinets. He picked a cabinet more or less at random and pulled open the door. Inside he found several syringes, a package of biscuits, the scanner that he had been looking for, bandages, and a lump of cheese that seemed to be growing fur. He took the biscuits and the scanner and left the rest.

"Doctor," he heard Angel say in a warning voice behind him. It had been a little over a minute since Angel had sat down, which was rather worrying given the circumstances. Angel was more worn out or injured than the Doctor had originally assessed.

The Doctor set the biscuits on the table, relocated the refrigerator, opened the door, considered, reconsidered, closed the door again, and moved off to fix the tea with the now-boiling water.

Angel was just pushing his way out of the chair again when the Doctor set a cup of tea on the table in front of him and another cup a little farther down the table. He knelt in front of Angel and pulled the scanner out of his pocket.

"Sit. What happened?" the Doctor asked, already scanning the leg.

"They took Connor, that's what happened!" Angel screamed loud enough to make the Doctor wince.

"I'm sorry," the Doctor said quietly.

"I don't care if you're sorry. I care if you're going to help. I don't have time for this." He waved a hand at the tea, or the kitchen, or maybe the Doctor. It wasn't a particularly well aimed gesture, and the Doctor wasn't sure. "You can follow them," Angel said the way people say things when they need them to be true. "Connor's special. He'll leave some sort of trail that you can follow."

"I'm very, very sorry."

"Then why did you even come?"

He came because he cared. He came because he knew how much this hurt and how much it was going to hurt. "I came to help. It's not going to be what you want; there are things…" The Doctor stopped and changed course. "This ship can do nearly anything. Time and space, the beginnings and ends and all of the middle moments, but she can't travel between the dimensions, Angel. I'm sorry, but the TARDIS wasn't built for it." It was not the biggest lie the Doctor had ever told.

Angel sank back into the chair. The desperate need to act that had been pushing him to his feet was cut out from under him and replaced with the realization that his last-ditch plan was not going to pan out. "This isn't helping. Tea is not going to bring Connor back."

The Doctor nodded, his fingers making small adjustments to the scanner. "No, it won't," he said, "although it is very good. You should try it. But when I said I was helping, I wasn't talking about the tea…" He paused, waiting for Angel to look up. When he was sure Angel was paying attention, he continued, "I'm giving you a Moment."

"What?"

"I stopped time for you. Actually, I shifted us halfway into the vortex so that we can sit repeating the exact same moment for, well, nearly as long as you want. Although the exact same moment gets a tad boring after awhile. It's a bit like –"

Angel cut him off, "I don't care what it's like."

The Doctor deflated. "I suppose you wouldn't," he agreed soberly.

"That's not much help," Angel said.

"Actually, it is." The Doctor paused, trying to come up with the words to explain. In the end, he gave up trying to think about it and just started talking.

"I am a Time Lord," he started. "I don't think I ever told you, but that's what I'm called. That's what I am." The scanner in his hand told him that Angel was suffering nerve damage similar to that caused by electrocution with a friendly _ding_. The Doctor adjusted several settings and set to waving the scanner over Angel's leg as he spoke. "My people were not the only ones to discover time travel, you know. There are other species and races that figured it out. Even humans manage to sort out a rudimentary form of time-jumping eventually."

The scanner clicked off automatically before it had time to do any good. The Doctor glanced at the screen. It told him that the patient was dead. Why did everything have to be so automated? He pressed around for an override switch. "But all of those other races called themselves time _travelers_. It's like they knew - although sometimes I think they were told - that they were merely tourists in our kingdom." He gave up on getting the scanner to cooperate on its own and pulled out his screwdriver and sonic-ed it into submission. It sparked in his hand as the automatic settings shorted out.

Angel twitched when the Doctor redirected the scanner at his leg, which was actually a good sign. Fixing nerves usually hurt.

"Does this story have a point?" Angel asked impatiently.

"Maybe. Or it might just be the ramblings of an old man." The Doctor gave Angel a small smile. He always admired how honest Angel tended to be about things like this. And the indifferent attitude towards his past was probably good for him. He talked so little about his past that on the rare occasions that he did talk about it his companions almost always listened with rapt attention. He wondered if it were possible for a Time Lord to learn humility. He'd certainly never seen it before and probably never would. "I'm almost done," he told Angel, purposefully unclear about whether he was talking about the leg or his story.

"Some say that the reason that Time Lords mastered time like no other group is because the first thing we mastered was not hopping to the past or the future. The first thing that we learned was how to step out of time and stand still."

The scanner, having done all it could, beeped again. The Doctor climbed to his feet settled into the chair with his cup of tea. "The thing is, Angel, once you jump into a time you become a part of it. And then you can't think about it because it's all reacting and doing and fighting and running away from giant three-eyed centipedes. What people don't do is _think_. Because they don't have time or they're scared or they're angry or it looks like you don't have any choices. Those choices, Angel, the little ones and the rushed ones and the ones you don't think you really have. They matter."

Angel was watching him closely now, impatience gone from his face. "You're giving me time to think."

"I'm sorry that I can't make this easy for you," the Doctor said. "I can't give you your son back. You are going to have to make a lot of choices very soon and most of them would be better made if you weren't tired and hurt."

Angel considered this, bending his leg slightly as if testing it for pain before he moved it more. The Doctor waited for him. Angel has always been about action and movement, and so this was going to be a difficult lesson for him. If he learned it, the Doctor mused, Angel would be one up on him.

Angel reached slowly out and took the cup of tea, pulling it into his hands with slow careful movements. "Just a second will pass?" he asked, all of the grief and despair and exhaustion finding its way into his voice because, the Doctor suspected, he just realized that it could. For a moment, he didn't have to be strong.

"If you stay for more than a few hours I'll have to expand the loop to more like six seconds." The Doctor admitted. "But I'll give you a ride home to make up for the lost time. I didn't see your car there."

"I stole a jeep."

"Ah. I think they stole it back, which wasn't very thoughtful of them."

Angel shook his head, although it looked less like a response to the Doctor and more like a response to some internal dialogue.

The Doctor waited patiently as Angel stared at his tea. And then he waited slightly less patiently because he had never really been good at sitting and waiting. He wondered how it was that Angel managed to be so still and then figured that it was the fact that he didn't breathe, which really made the whole stillness thing really work for Angel. He did blink, but at a rate slightly less often than human. More like a cat, really. He pondered reclassifying all of the animal kingdom on earth by blinks per minute and then, because he was still waiting, went ahead and did. It wasn't a very good system, but most of the fish ended up separated from everything else.

He retrieved the scanner from where he'd placed it on the table and started pulling it apart. With a proper rewiring he could have it switch to manual without shorting it out first.

They stayed there for a long time, Angel holding his tea cup and the Doctor making adjustments to the medical equipment in the kitchen. Occasionally the Doctor would leave to go find some wires or a tool, mostly to see if Angel preferred to be alone, but the vampire never seemed to move during his absence, so the Doctor mostly stayed in the kitchen. Most of the times when his life had fallen apart, he had been alone. Sometimes that had been good, but most of the time it had been horrible. So he stayed and tinkered, being another presence in the room that sometimes made all the difference.

Angel never drank the tea, but the Doctor switched it out twice in case it was the warmth or the smell that he really liked. Angel nodded briefly at him when he did, so he suspected he must be at least a little right.

Four hours, thirty-two minutes and ten seconds later, Angel reached out to pick up a discarded wire and asked, "What are you doing?"

The Doctor looked across the kitchen table, taking in the piles of tools and wires and odd bits of science-y things and then looked down at the small, red, spikey ball in his hands. He blinked at it like it had snuck up on him, which it mostly had. He pointed to a large, domed machine teetering on the edge of the table.

"That is a bit like an x-ray. Actually, it's not like an x-ray at all because it doesn't use rays, but you can think of it like that if you like. That box with the screen over there is for measuring certain types of energy. That is a scanner from the 75th century; you've seen that. And this is a microsonic temporal field enhancer. Mostly, I'm making improvements, but this I'm actually building from scratch." Actually, he was building it from scraps because most of the materials used to make a new one were lost on Gallifrey. The one on the TARDIS hadn't given out, but if it did, he would be grounded until he managed to replace it.

Angel nodded, twirling the wire between his fingers. "Is there a place," he asked, sounding a little guilty, "that I could sleep?"

There was. The Doctor led Angel down a hall to a spot that seemed like the sort of place that would have a bedroom in it. The door on the left contained a small room furnished in deep colors with a large bed on the far wall. He waved Angel into it with a little bow.

Pausing briefly inside the door, Angel turned to look at the Doctor; he scratched his neck briefly and said, very, very quietly, "Thank you."

The Doctor wasn't really sure if he deserved that. Certainly not from Angel, who was so very extraordinary. He gave Angel a brief nod and told him that he'd be down the hall if Angel needed anything, confident that wherever he went, the TARDIS would be sure that it was just down the hall from Angel.

Angel nodded and closed the door.


	2. Part Two

_We are men of action, lies do not become us._

- William Goldman

When Angel woke, he couldn't remember where he was or why, like part of his mind had been left behind in the deep oceans of sleep. Surprisingly, it was the alien thrum of the Doctor's ship that gave him the small clue that brought the rest of him memories rushing back: Connor, Holtz, the portal, his desperate call to the Doctor, the Doctor's expression as he told Angel that he was sorry.

And the Moment.

Some part of him hated himself for taking it. How could he sit and rest when Connor was lost in some hell dimension? Even worse, he had wasted yesterday. The Doctor had given him time; time to think or to prepare or to make decisions, and all he had done was crumble.

The Doctor gave him all the time in the world and he had done nothing. Instead, he had experienced a sense of relief that he might never forgive himself for. He had, for that moment that lasted hours, given up. Although he was sure that he had sat there for a very long time, he couldn't even remember what he had thought about, if he had thought about anything at all.

And then he come to his room and grieved. That, he was sure he'd never forgive himself for. He had curled himself onto the bed and cried for the loss of the family that he never thought he could have, for the betrayal of his closest friend, for being too damned stupid to see any of it coming.

Angel stumbled out of the bed and found the bathroom without looking for it. He blinked at it and then turned around to look at the room behind him. It was, he thought, one of the most deeply disturbing things that he had ever seen.

It was his room. Not that he had ever lived in a room like it, but all the same it seemed meant for him. He had even thought of it as his room without being told. The walls were a deep green that he was particularly fond of; the floors were wooden and covered with several ornate rugs; the dressers were simple and, while he couldn't tell what material they were made out of, they were big enough that you wouldn't have to stack your shirts so deep in them that you'd never be able to find the one you wanted. Everything seemed to be chosen specifically to put him at ease and make him feel at home.

As far as Angel was concerned, anything that seemed that good must be hiding something.

Deciding that it was already far too late to avoid the trap, Angel turned back to the bathroom. Besides, he had more important things to consider. Today would not be wasted the same way yesterday had been.

By the time Angel emerged from his room, he had made several decisions.

Running a hand through his damp hair, Angel considered the hallway outside his room. He remembered the Doctor saying that he would be "just down the hall," but seeing as the hall seemingly went on forever in either direction, Angel couldn't be sure what exactly he had meant by that.

He went right, choosing to backtrack his steps from the night before over the possibility of getting lost. It mostly worked, too; the kitchen was on a different side of the hall than he remembered, but it was there and the Doctor was inside.

The Doctor stood near what Angel suspected was some sort of stove that happened to be taller than it was wide and only had one burner; he was inspecting the contents of a pot with scientific intensity. He spun around when Angel entered the room.

"Ah! Angel! I thought that might be you," he said with a smile.

Angel did not ask who else it might have been. Not that he had time to ask; the Doctor continued chatting away without giving Angel much time to answer.

"Are you hungry?" he asked, opening the refrigerator door and pulling out a tall, silver cylinder. "I've been considering breakfast. Technically, it is still dinner time, or maybe time for dessert, depending on where you're from, but I enjoy breakfast so much more." He shoved the cylinder into a hole in the wall and then pushed a button. "Although, I admit that it took me awhile to sort that out. I've taken to being particular about what I eat. Bacon is so much better once you burn the edges a bit, you know? I didn't used to care, but I suppose I do now." He reached into the hole and again and retrieved the cylinder, searching seemingly haphazardly through the drawers closest to him until he pulled out a mug. He poured a thick liquid from the cylinder into the mug and then presented it to Angel with the same expectant glee as a child handing a coloring page to his parents.

Angel took the mug and sniffed it. "This is human," he said, looking down at the mug of blood. It said, "Olympics 7040!" on it.

The Doctor shuffled awkwardly and then went back to poking at the pot on the stove with a spoon. "Is that bad?" he asked, sounding genuinely concerned.

Angel considered the blood again and took a sip. Normally he wouldn't, but given that he was running toward the edge of a moral cliff, he didn't think that it would make much of a difference if the black canyon he was jumping into was just a little deeper. Human blood made him stronger anyway. "It's…unexpected," he said.

"Ah," said the Doctor, frowning at the pot. "I see. It's from the med bay. I tend to travel with humans, so I keep a bit on hand in case…" he turned to look nervously at Angel, seemingly uncomfortable with finishing the sentence.

"It was in your fridge."

"Yes, well, it seems like the med bay might have crossed itself with the kitchen cabinets. Must be some faulty wiring somewhere; I've been meaning to fix that."

Angel thought that was disturbingly convenient, given the sudden appearance of the futuristic device the Doctor had used to heal Angel's leg the night before. He leaned against a counter and drank his breakfast.

"I was also thinking," the Doctor said, possibly to fill the silence, "that since you didn't seem to like the tea last night, that you were _American_." He said this like it was a shocking revelation. "So I found…" he shifted several canisters around on the counter, "This!" He presented Angel with a very normal looking coffee maker.

Angel raised an eyebrow. "This is fine," he said, and tried very hard not to think about how much he liked the Doctor.

The Doctor looked disappointed for the briefest of moments and then he seemed to ponder Angel's expression, his eyes deep and caring. "How are you?" he asked seriously.

"Fine."

"No you're not," the Doctor said, and then dropped the subject at least for the moment. "It got me thinking about other American food. I don't try it much. So I thought I'd have a whirl at it while I waited. I started with grits. Unfortunately, I don't think it's doing…so…well." He peered at the pot on the stove again, wrinkling his nose.

Against his better judgment, Angel went and looked. "I think it's supposed to look like that," he said.

"Oh," said the Doctor, idly rubbing two fingers together under his chin as he considered the contents of the pot. "How…disappointing." Without preamble, the Doctor stuck two fingers into the pot, hooked them and shoveled a large amount of the greyish goo into his mouth. He promptly spat it back out again into the pot and shook his hand to get the remaining sludge off of his fingers. "Must be why I never go to America," he grumbled, slumping over to the table and collapsing into one of the chairs. He snatched a rag from amidst a pile of tools and started wiping off his fingers, apparently finding the exchange of engine grease for grits to be a fair one.

Occasionally, the Doctor would look up from his work of wiping off his hands to glance at Angel in what he probably thought was a surreptitious manner.

Angel did not join him at the table. If he did he might lose his resolve, which was something Connor could not afford for him to do. No, he had to maintain control of the situation, and the best way he knew to do that was to stay still. The Doctor seemed to abhor stillness. Last night (that wasn't really last night, Angel reminded himself), the Doctor had waited quietly with Angel, but not peacefully. The shipwreck of machine parts on the table was proof of that.

Angel took the screaming part of himself that told him that what he was doing was wrong and locked it away for a time when he could afford to listen. Considering how significant a comfort it was to have a physical presence there to remind him that he was not completely alone was not going to bring Connor back. He knew what was.

The Doctor was looking at him again, this time without bothering to hide it. Was that concern on his face or curiosity? For a brief, panicked moment, Angel thought it was suspicion. He drank the last of the blood from the mug to hide any reaction on his face and then set the mug on the counter. When he looked back, the Doctor was still watching him intently, but not, Angel decided, with suspicion.

"I think," Angel said, "that I'm ready."

"Ok," said the Doctor. He stood and walked out of the kitchen. Angel followed.

They took a different route back to the console room than Angel remembered taking down to the kitchen. There were several more flights of stairs for one thing. And the window for another. It was a small, four-paned ordeal with overdone French casing set apparently haphazardly in one of the walls. Through it poured a single shaft of sunlight merrily ignoring facts like it was dark outside and this wasn't even an exterior wall.

The Doctor took no notice of it, but Angel paused automatically. It was probably artificial, he told himself as the Doctor continued down the hall without him, and even if it wasn't he could make it through only slightly singed if he took it at a run. He was about to do that when the Doctor returned, having finally noticed that he was down one vampire shadow.

"What's that doing there?" he asked, looking from the beam of sunlight to Angel and then, inexplicably the wall next to him. He reached out a hand and touched the wall. There was that look of concern again, but directed at the wall, and then what was unquestionably a look of suspicion directed at Angel and then that look was quickly schooled into a friendly smile. The Doctor reached out and pulled down the blinds that Angel had failed to notice and said, "Come on." He turned his back on Angel and continued down the hall like nothing had happened.

Angel told himself that being dismissed like that made him angry and not terrified. He followed the Doctor closely after that, trying to ignore the paintings on the wall. Two of them had graphic depictions of men slaying demons and a third had a cross as the main subject.

Angel tensed. These were mind games, he told himself. They were well-executed, subtle and nearly impossible as far as he could tell, but mind games all the same. He knew that in the end, mind games only worked if the recipient destroyed themselves. Angel had made his decision.

The Doctor reached the stairs leading up to the console. Before Angel had time to think, he reached out a hand to touch the Doctor's shoulder.

The Doctor looked back at him.

_He looks sad._ The thought came unbidden to Angel's mind and he tried to wrestle it away. While he did that, he said, "Doctor, I…"

The Doctor waited patiently for Angel to finish, damn him. "Thank you," Angel said, because he meant it, and, "I'm sorry." Because he had to.

The Doctor nodded and said, "You are very welcome. And I'm sorry, too." Then he turned and walked up the stairs.

Angel walked off of the cliff.

On the first step he reminded himself that he was a vampire.

On the second step he remembered that the Doctor had lied to him.

On the third step he reasoned that the Doctor wasn't even human.

On the last six steps he thought of Connor.

When he entered the lower floor of the console room, the Doctor was already flipping switches on the elevated glass deck. "Three-point-one-six seconds," he told Angel. "Not bad, really. So the Hyperion? You haven't moved, have you? I forget to ask sometimes and that can be….awkward." He glanced up, looking slightly embarrassed until he spotted Angel, still lingering on the lower level. Then he looked wary.

"You lied to me," Angel told him letting every one of his words come out cold and hard as he walked to the base of the stairs leading up to the glass platform. "I told you before that you are not nearly as good at lying as you think you are."

"That still leaves quite a bit of room for me to be good at it," the Doctor said with a small smile.

"You said you couldn't help," Angel growled, "but it's not that you can't. It's that you won't."

The Doctor looked like he had been struck. He looked down and adjusted another switch. "I _can't_," he said.

Angel prowled up the stairs. All of the fury and anger and speed in the world wouldn't move the Doctor, but Angel knew that stillness scared him. So he walked slowly and then stopped just inside the point where the Doctor leaned back. "You gave me time to think," Angel told him in a conversational tone. "And it occurred to me that we don't need to go to Quor'toth. We just need to stop him from going there."

The Doctor didn't try to regain his space. "That's not how it works," he said.

"You," Angel told him with a cruel smile, "are a Time Lord. _Make_ it work."

"No."

In one sharp movement Angel grabbed the Doctor by the throat and shoved him into the glass floor. He went still again. The Doctor was many things, but unnaturally strong was not one of them. He thrashed and kicked, but Angel did not move or relent.

Somewhere behind him, a gong sounded. The Doctor stopped thrashing and mumbled in his choked voice, "It's ok."

"I assure you," Angel told him, "that it is not ok. Did I ever tell you what I was like before I got a soul? I was very good at getting people to do what I wanted. I know that you're not human, but I assume all of the basics will still apply."

"I can't," the Doctor repeated and then thrashed with such a sudden intensity that Angel almost lost his grip. Angel shoved the Doctor's head into the floor again for his trouble, the whole struggle ending a few inches from where it began.

"You will," Angel told him. It wasn't a threat or a request, but a statement of fact.

The Doctor shifted his hand. At first Angel thought it was to try and grab at Angel's hand on his throat - it was the typical response to this sort of thing - but instead he raised it in the air. Angel watched the hand, his instincts screaming at him, but before he could figure out what they were screaming or why, the Doctor snapped his fingers.

Pain hit Angel like a truck. He scrambled back and away until he plunged back into the cool darkness. He spent several moments blinking the spots from his eyes and shielding his face from the burning sensation that was no longer there.

The first thing that he saw when he regained his vision was the Doctor sitting casually in a pathway of light. His eyes followed the path to the TARDIS doors and beyond that was…

"The Sun," the Doctor told him. "You probably can't see it from where you're at, but that is Earth's sun out there. I wasn't sure what the rules were for vampires on other planets so I used the one I knew would work."

Angel blinked at the stars he could see through the doors and tried not to think about how all of the air wasn't pouring out of the ship. "You said we hadn't moved." He felt immensely stupid for saying it.

"I said that we wouldn't move in time. It's easier to establish a time loop in space where there aren't all of those people making choices and mucking up the time stream. Out here, one second is much like the next." The Doctor looked out the doors and Angel wondered if he was seeing something more than Angel could.

"Angel, I need you to look at me," the Doctor said.

Angel thought his voice sounded a bit like his father's. He looked at the Doctor's knee, the one in the Doctor's own shadow. He needed a plan. He could knock the Doctor out of the sunlight and then…

"Angel."

Angel looked up at the Doctor's eyes and realized that he had miscalculated. He remembered thinking that his room had been too perfect and anything that perfect must obviously be hiding something. In a sharp moment of clarity he realized that the Doctor was the horrible danger this magical box was working so hard to conceal.

"Angel," the Doctor started, making Angel wish that he wouldn't use his name so much, "I need you to understand something. I am not your enemy."

Angel snorted.

"I like you quite a bit, Angel. I like to think that we are friends. But I need you to know that I can't stand stupid people. I need you to understand that attacking me on my ship is very possibly one of the stupidest things you could think of to do. Angel, look at me. I need you to understand because I'm going to let it go just this once." The Doctor raised his hand again.

"If you close those doors," Angel told him, "I will hurt you."

The Doctor gave him a pitying smile.

"Quor'toth is a hell dimension. I've been to hell before, Doctor. I can't just leave him there."

"I know, but I can't help you."

"WHY NOT?" Angel screamed. He lunged forward, stopping only a hair's width away from

the stream of light that the Doctor sat in.

The Doctor dropped his hand. "There are laws…" he started.

"Fuck the laws," Angel told him, pacing like a caged tiger along the edge of the sunbeam.

The Doctor chuckled. It was short and mostly humorless, more like a short exhale. "I used to think that sometimes."

"And now?"

"I grew up."

Angel snarled. "Do you get younger every time you die?" he asked. "I'd be willing to kill you to find out." It was a pointless statement and a cruel one, but he thought the brief moment of shock on the Doctor's face made it worth it.

The Doctor shook his head. "I know you would, but the truth is, Angel, that there isn't anyone left to clean up my messes. If I did what you wanted me to, who would pay the price for that?"

"I would."

"You couldn't even comprehend it."

"Then you would. Or the world. Hell, drop Connor and me off in the nearest galaxy and burn this one. I don't care."

"I do. I know that…"

"STOP SAYING THAT!" Angel was prowling back and forth again. "You couldn't possibly know."

The Doctor stood up. "I could," he told Angel, his voice suddenly cold. "This is getting dull so let me explain: If I could rip open a whole into another dimension, and if I could locate a single child within that dimension, and if I could pluck that child out of that place before it ever had a chance to hurt them, and if I could find a way to get enough power to punch into yet another dimension because I couldn't go back to this one with the walls of reality collapsing like they would be, and if I could find a way to stabilize our existence within that universe without it, too, crumbing within a few years, if I could do all of that, Angel, I would not do it for your child because I'd be much too busy doing it for mine."

With a snap of the Doctor's fingers, they were left standing in the greenish glow of the console.

"So you're still at the Hyperion?" the Doctor asked as if nothing had happened, his hands making adjustments on the console as if they'd never been away from it. He had made half a circuit around the circle when he seemed to decide that Angel was not going to answer without further prodding.

Which was true: Angel stood dumbly next to the railing trying to make sense of the world over the noise of desperate screaming that had started in the back of his head the moment Holtz ran into the portal. He focused on making his hand stop shaking and swallowing the fear that had made it start.

He had caught the slightest glimpse of what the alien whom he had just attacked was capable of. It was like catching sight of an iceberg and realizing that you just couldn't know how much more of it lurked beneath the ocean and so you'd never know how far away you needed to be before you'd be safe.

The Doctor was standing in front of him now, reaching out a hand for his shoulder and the stopping with that pained expression when Angel flinched away. He didn't try to touch Angel again, instead coaxing him along with soft words and fluttering gestures until he was settled onto one of the steps leading down from the glass platform. The Doctor settled onto the step just below Angel, stretching out one leg and resting his arms on the knee of the other. "So do you know what you're going to do?" he asked.

Angel shook his head. He really, really didn't.

"Would you take a bit of advice from an old man, then?"

"Sure."

"Do your best."

The laugh caught in Angel's throat and came out like a choking sound.

"No, I mean it," the Doctor insisted. "When horrible things happen, it's so tempting to do your worst. For you more than others, I suspect. You think being a monster makes you strong."

"It gets the job done." Except for today when it had just given him a lesson in why vampires don't like the sun.

The Doctor didn't disagree. "It might. I've been a monster before, Angel, and I've been a hero. I've lived long enough now to see that being a monster is not worth the price, even if I thought so at the time."

"Connor would be worth it."

"Yes, but monsters often have such a hard time remembering things like that." The Doctor pushed himself back to his feet with a tired sigh that sounded odd coming from someone who looked so young. "You might be stronger as a monster, but I've seen you be a hero, and that's when you're extraordinary."

The Doctor moved back up the stairs, briefly touching Angel's shoulder as he passed. A short time later, the air filled with the sound of grinding motors, or whatever it was that made that noise. The ship jolted and bumped and then settled again.

"Are you ready?" the Doctor asked, descending the stairs and leaning forward slightly to meet Angel's eyes.

Angel considered telling the Doctor that he wasn't ready, but he reconsidered and stood to his feet. He had his son to save.

The Doctor beamed at him proudly, like standing up was the most heroic thing the Doctor had ever witnessed. He walked with Angel down to the door and then pushed it open to reveal the singed carcass of Angel's room with Connor's empty crib sitting in the middle of the destruction.

Angel started to move out into the room when the Doctor touched his arm, pulling just enough to get him to stop. He shifted nervously for a moment before he spoke. "I wanted to…" he started, but switched tracks. "Remember that you still have people with you, Angel. Let them help. And…"

Angel waited for him to continue, but the Doctor seemed to catch sight of the crib behind him and think better of whatever he was going to say. Instead he said, "Goodbye, Angel," and closed the TARDIS door.

Angel wondered why he had said goodbye like that, like he had to or he wouldn't get another chance. The TARDIS started to fade, taking away thoughts of the Doctor and leaving him alone with the empty crib.

**The End**

**AN:** Thanks for reading! If you want to know when the next story goes up (_A Short Trip Outside the Universe_), please put us on author alert, not story alert. Thanks again!


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